Very few other than Rand himself has the ability to pull off a great WBF and you sir did a great job here. Very informative content and especially the last point where you explained that the number of links doesn't carry as much weight as it used to do and how Google started using knowledge to relate the queries. I see very similar examples with client sites and I completely understand what you were talking about. Everyone sees only evil side of Google and ignore the opportunities it is providing to small businesses to compete with the monsters out there. Once again thanks for such a great WBF. First time I didn't miss Rand on WBF.

My opinion: Typical SEO who reads about CRO and Landing page designing everyday (more than any designer of the creative team in some cases) should not let loose the creative team but work with them for better results.

Well they don't want to loose their ad revenue due to some author pics. In my opinion Authorship is just like schema giving Google more information about post and it has very low or no affect on rankings.

It's really painful to see inconsistent NAPs. Currently dealing with a client who did the same mistake and let me tell you that it was not easy to find and correct everything. Only if you posted this article little early. :P

Cool post James!It is very important to have decent knowledge about SEO and current trends in the industry to implement any of the above methods, as they can fall into any of the three areas (white, black, grey), which brings me to your statement "if done right".

I personally like to read blogs like Moz, SEL (I read full article here) on desktop/laptop unlike news sites (I just skim through the content here) which i'd rather prefer mobile. May be this could be the case with others also. Serious blogs need more attention :P